FMI’s work in Latin America has focused on key regional issues, including trade and investment, poverty alleviation, and legal and regulatory reform. FMI’s current work in the region includes the highly successful USAID Support for DR-CAFTA Implementation Project (Procafta), a three-year technical assistance project to promote trade and investment among Nicaragua’s leading export industries, and to harmonize Nicaragua’s legal and regulatory regime with the country’s treaty obligations. Over the past fifteen years, FMI has worked with both public and private sectors in Nicaragua, Jamaica, and Brazil to build advocacy platforms for financial sector development and establish priorities for economic growth.

NICARAGUA
FMI is currently implementing a complex multi-year program to assist Nicaragua in benefiting from the DR-CAFTA regional free trade agreement. The Project provides technical assistance and training services to the Government of Nicaragua and especially to the private sector on institutional development, trade capacity building, legal and regulatory reform, systems development (e.g. intellectual property, market information), food safety, and strategic planning. FMI’s major accomplishments in Nicaragua include: passage of three major economic laws (competition/anti-monopoly, small businesses, coastal property) critical to the development of small businesses and tourism; delivery of trade-capacity building services in customs, packaging and labeling, marketing, sanitary, phyto-sanitary and other export requirements, regulatory policies, and intellectual property; and provision of training to over 6,000 Nicaraguans, over 40% of whom were women.

JAMAICA
For USAID, FMI conducted an economic analysis and developed a country strategy for promoting and supporting economic growth. FMI worked extensively with Jamaica’s agribusiness, technology, tourism, and light manufacturing sectors in an effort to expand Jamaica's exports through an improved trade and investment framework. Additionally, FMI was very active in Jamaica’s securities market, providing technical assistance to the newly created Jamaican Securities Commission in defining rules and regulations, and to the Central Bank to increase supervision of mutual funds, insurance companies, and other capital markets actors.

BRAZIL
For the World Bank, FMI conducted an analysis of Brazil’s commodities markets, working directly with the Brazilian Securities Commission on proper functions of a commodities exchange. FMI helped develop Brazil’s surveillance system for these markets, including clearing and settlement mechanisms and appropriate regulations and legislation.